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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26219332">I Owe You</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/flipflop_diva/pseuds/flipflop_diva'>flipflop_diva</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Captain America (Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon Divergence - Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Gen, Life Debt, Natasha Romanov Feels, POV Natasha Romanov, Protective Bucky Barnes, Protective Steve Rogers, Red Room (Marvel)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 09:47:45</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,336</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26219332</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/flipflop_diva/pseuds/flipflop_diva</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>In a world where life debts are written on your wrist until they're settled, Natasha has two too many.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>James "Bucky" Barnes &amp; Natasha Romanov, Steve Rogers &amp; Natasha Romanov</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>42</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe Exchange 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>I Owe You</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/firelord65/gifts">firelord65</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>She stared down at the names written on her wrist, her fingers gently tracing over the letters. One was old, so old, reminding her every day that she would probably never get the chance to make it up to him. The other was new, just a few hours old, but the fact that it was there made her heart clench in both gratitude and horror.</p><p>Owing anyone anything was a hard pill to swallow, let alone a debt for saving her life. It went against everything she had been trained for, to never owe anyone anything and to always be the one that was owed, not the one who owed.</p><p>And then to have it out there, to be written on her wrist the moment the debt first became owed, like a scarlet letter blaring her sins to the world, when so many people would never have one at all. </p><p>It was shameful and humiliating and, even worse, made her feel like a failure. She had been trained to be the best, yet this was the third life debt that had been imbedded in her skin. </p><p>There used to be another name on her wrist — Clint’s name — but at least that one had been erased when she had saved him from Loki’s scepter and brought him back to himself. She didn’t think it should have been — she felt like she could never really fully repay him for what he had done for her when he spared her life and brought her in to SHIELD, protecting her even then from the people who had wanted to kill her on the spot — but the universe disagreed with her, and it was the universe, after all, that decided what and when life debts ultimately were and weren’t paid.</p><p>She ran her fingers over the oldest name now. <i>Soldat.</i> It’s what she had called him back then. She hadn’t known any other name. She had just known him as the soldier who trained them — her and the other girls in the Red Room — who pushed them, who battled them to make them better. But he was also the one who sometimes smiled at her when no one else was looking and was sometimes kind to her when no one else would be, at least more than her young self could remember anyone ever being.</p><p>And it had been him who stopped her trainers from snapping her neck, who took the blame for the mission failing, when it had not been him at all. It had been her — because she hadn’t listened, because even back then, on her very first mission, she’d thought she’d known better — and everything had gone to hell. Their target escaping, their covers blown, the people they had been tracking going so far underground it would take years to dig them up again.</p><p>It was the worst failure she’d ever had — the worst failure anyone in the Red Room had had in decades — and they had wanted to kill her for it, but the Soldier had stepped in, had said it was his fault, and she had stood there and screamed as they took him away to punish him and torture him and wipe him. </p><p>That night, she had awoken to a piercing pain in her left wrist. In horror, she had watched as the letters spelling out his name had appeared. She spent the next week trying to keep it covered — by her clothes or makeup she had stolen from a trainer — until Madame had grabbed her wrist, her fingers tight over the still-burning scar.</p><p>“You use this as a reminder to never fail,” she had snarled at her. “Or you will regret it.”</p><p>Natasha had been sent to solitary after that. She never saw the Soldier again, not until years later when he shot her in Odessa. </p><p>The Winter Soldier, that’s who he was now. She had been trying to find him since then, a mixture of revenge but also this ache in her chest that said she couldn’t owe anyone anything.</p><p>But she had failed at every step, until now, here, when he was back again. Maybe she could find him this time …</p><p>She dropped her finger down her wrist from the soldier’s name to the new name that had just appeared. It still throbbed, written over the spot where Clint’s name had once been.</p><p>
  <i>Steve Rogers</i>
</p><p>She would be dead if it weren’t for him. Or captured by Hydra. Or worse. And again, it was her fault. If she had just let him be …</p><p>Well, if she had just let him be, she wouldn’t know that everything she thought she had been working for since she joined SHIELD was just another lie.</p><p>The sound of the water turning off and the bathroom door opening drew her attention away from her wrist. Steve caught her eyes before dropping his own gaze to her wrist, which she shoved quickly behind her back.</p><p>“I wish I could take that away,” he said softly. “You don’t owe me anything.”</p><p>“I owe you everything.”</p><p>“You don’t, Natasha.”</p><p>“I’m going to repay you one day.”</p><p>“You don’t have to.”</p><p>She shook her head. “You don’t understand, Steve. I do have to.”</p><p>He was going to say more, she knew it, but Sam’s head popped into the doorway before he could.</p><p>“I made breakfast,” Sam told them, and then grinned, “if you two eat that kind of thing.”</p><p>--</p><p>She couldn’t let him get away this time. She had to bring him in … well, she had to at least get him to somewhere that was safe. He apparently had similar orders, but she suspected his were probably more along the lines of leaving her dead than bringing her to Hydra.</p><p>He was so much stronger than her, just as she remembered, and bigger. Not faster, but nearly as fast. But she had grown up a lot since her trainers made her fight him back in the Red Room. And she was better prepared now. More subtle in her movements. Smarter.</p><p>She used a recording of her voice on her phone to lure him out, and then she attacked him from behind, leaping on to his shoulders, her grappling wire around his neck. He spun, fighting to get her off, but she held on tighter, desperate to bring him down. </p><p>She could hear the sounds of fighting all around her, of people screaming and running. She had lost track of where Steve and Sam were, but she had to stay focused on the task at hand.</p><p>The soldier whirled around, smashed himself backward — taking her with him — and she crashed, hard, into a car, the wind knocked out of her.</p><p>She didn’t let go, though, kept holding on as she sprang up, clawing to get a grip on his head, but her grappling hook slipped from her hands and his arm was on her ankle. </p><p>He yanked her, hard, sending her flying forward over his head, crashing hard into the ground, but as she sailed over him, her hands reached out for purchase and they latched on to the mask covering his face. It came off with her as she smacked into the ground, her body and her head screaming at her in agony.</p><p>The world tilted and spun as she tried to focus herself. Her vision blurred but she could just make out a shape leaning over her.</p><p>She blinked, trying to clear her vision, and then all the air left her body.</p><p>She stared up into a face — not one that she had seen when she was a child, for his mask was always on, but one she had seen in photographs Steve carried with him wherever he went.</p><p>It couldn’t be. But it was.</p><p>“Bucky,” she breathed.</p><p>Bucky. James. <i>Soldat.</i></p><p>The names on her wrist began to sting just as his hand clamped around her neck and started to squeeze, and her final thought before she passed out was maybe this was her chance to erase both her debts.</p>
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